Tal R: The Virgin

A mammoth scrapbook of drawings, paintings, textiles and collages by the popular Copenhagen-based, Israeli artist Tal R (born 1967), The Virgin combines new and old work to offer a total portrait of the vibrant oeuvre of this perennially popular artist. A special focus of the volume is the pigment paintings upon which he embarked in the early 2000s. Tal R’s riotously colorful works move freely between figuration and abstraction, and are characterized by an immediately evident ease with his media, and indeed with the very process of making art. As Barry Schwabsky writes, in an essay for this volume: “What’s obvious immediately is that Tal R is a natural. That means his being an artist, or something like an artist, isn’t exactly a choice--it’s something he could have avoided only at great cost.” This volume traces the breaks and continuities in Tal R’s two-decade career.